Backup and Restore Photos App options in Windows 10

In Windows 10, there is a built-in Photos app which allows viewing images and performing basic editing. Its tile is pinned to the Start menu. Also, the app is associated with most image file formats out of the box. Today, we'll see how to backup and restore its options. Later, you can restore them when required or transfer them to another PC or user account. This is very useful.

Windows 10 ships with a Photos app which replaced the Windows Photo Viewer and Photo Gallery. Photos offers very basic functionality to view images from the user's local drive or from the OneDrive cloud storage. Windows 10 includes this app instead of the good old Windows Photo Viewer from Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. The Photos app is set as the default image viewer app. The Photos app can be used to browse, share and edit your photos and your image collection. With recent updates, the app got a brand new feature "Story Remix" which allows applying a set of fancy 3D effects to your photos and videos. Also, the ability to trim and merge videos was added.

If you use Windows 10 Photos daily, it is a good idea to backup your settings. Here is how it can be done.

To backup Photos app options in Windows 10, do the following.

1. Close the Photos app. You can terminate it in Settings.
2. Open the File Explorer app.
3. Go to the folder %LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.Photos_8wekyb3d8bbwe. You can paste this line to the address bar of File Explorer and hit the Enter key.
4. Open the Settings subfolder. There, you will see a set of files. Select them.
5. Right-click on the selected files and select "Copy" in the context menu, or press the Ctrl + C key sequence to copy the files.
6. Paste them to some safe location.

That's it. You just created a backup copy of your Photos app settings. To restore them or move to another PC or user account, you need to place them under the same folder.

Restore Photos app options in Windows 10

1. Close the Photos app. You can terminate it in Settings.
2. Open the File Explorer app.
3. Go to the folder %LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.Photos_8wekyb3d8bbwe. You can paste this line to the address bar of File Explorer and hit the Enter key.
4. Here, paste the files settings.dat and roaming.lock.

Now you can start the app. It should appear with all your previously saved settings.

Note: The same method can be used to backup and restore the options of the Alarms & Clock app in Windows 10. See the related article here:

Backup and Restore Alarms & Clock in Windows 10